As for me, I went down to the Red White and Boom fireworks display that the Cape puts on each year. It was crowded as shit, the beers were $6, and the bugs were feasting on everybody. Needless to say I didn't stay long, instead electing to fall back and watch the fireworks from the roof of my house an hour or so later. But I did observe one rather disturbing encounter. Amongst all of the vendors -- Italian sausages, pizza, burgers, lemonade, glow sticks, election commission -- I was pleasantly surprised to see the Army had set up a trailer. As I got closer, there were several soldiers wearing their digital camouflage uniforms, enthusiastically meeting and greeting anyone who wanted to talk. Posing for pictures, talking about Army life, listening to tales from grey haired veterans... pretty much doing some great PR work. The booth they were working from was more of an entertainment center: a big tractor-trailer where the entire side folded open. Inside were several of the "Army of One" first-person-shooter games that were all available to play. Players were shooting mock M4's, .50 cal machine guns, and a couple more I couldn't see because it was too crowded. Complimenting the flashing screens and stereo sound effects, Katy Perry belted from the overhead loudspeakers, enticing all the penises with her accounts of her Teenage Dream.

If you want to watch someone more full of shit than you have ever seen in your life, get a load of this fucking idiot. Remember folks, religion is like a penis. It's fine to have one. It's fine to be proud of it. But please don't whip it out in public and start waving it around. And PLEASE don't try to shove it down my throat. So all liberal vs conservative debate aside... what a phony, pompous, self-righteous asshole. Too bad Casey Anthony wasn't his mother. I guess now you know why there are so many Jews in comedy.

My wife stood before me with some items in front of her. Without a word, she emptied a large jar of mayonnaise and proceeded to refill the empty jar with rocks 2" diameter, right to the top. She then asked me if the jar was full. I agreed that it was. She then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them in to the jar. She shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, settled into the open areas between the rocks. My wife then asked me if the jar was now full. I agreed that, yes, it was. She then poured a bag of sand into the jar with the result that the sand filled up the remaining spaces between the rocks and pebbles. "Now," said my wife, "I want you to recognize that this is your life. The rocks are the important things - your family, your wife who loves you, your health, your children - anything that is so important to you that if it were lost, you would be nearly destroyed. The pebbles are the other things in life that matter, but on a smaller scale. The pebbles represent things like your job, your house and your car. The sand is everything else. The small stuff. Your X-box 360, football, the pub, porn. If you put the sand or the pebbles first, there is no room for the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your energy and time on the small stuff, material things, you will never have room for the things that are truly most important." I was dumbfounded. Where the fuck was she going to get more mayonnaise for my sandwich?

Okay I have to be honest, I was hoping for bad weather so the launch would get delayed and I'd have a chance of making it to back up to Titusville to see the final shuttle launch. I woke up this morning and the first thing I did was watch the weather reports. Okay, I watched the weather report girls, but then I watched the weather reports. As of 6am, there was a 70% chance of thunderstorms forecast all day for Titusville, Florida. I was hopeful. But in no short order, I watched the countdown tick away -- I got kind of excited when they held the countdown at 0:31 -- but before I knew it, it was Main Engine Start. And I guess its somewhat fitting that a program that started with me huddled around a television, should end with me doing the same.

Today, July 12, 2011, President Barack Obama will award Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Arthur Petry, with the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry. Petry will receive the Medal of Honor for his courageous actions during combat operations against an armed enemy in Paktya, Afghanistan, May 26, 2008. Petry now serves as part of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 75th Ranger Regiment at Fort Benning, Ga. "It's very humbling to know that the guys thought that much of me and my actions that day, to nominate me for that," said Petry, on learning he had been nominated for the medal. At the time of his actions in Afghanistan, Petry was assigned to Company D, 2nd Bn., 75th Ranger Regiment at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. Petry's actions came as part of a rare daylight raid to capture a high-value target.

Netflix's current pricing plan: The $9.99 I pay each month which buys me unlimited streaming of their movies, plus as many DVDs as I would like each month, but only 1 DVD out at a time. They offer 2-3-4-etc DVDs at a time plans, but eh, most of the stuff on DVD that I want to watch is pretty eclectic and only comes along every so often, so so why bother.

If you have trouble with your phone's voicemail -- and if you give enough of a shit to actually want it fixed -- you'll call your service provider for technical support. The person you will reach will be a Tier-1 support person; their job is to take down your basic information and implement a simple set of troubleshooting steps to weed out the actual voicemail problems from the user-induced mistakes. Most of the time it's user error, so only a small portion of those calls make it up to Tier 2 support; these are the Tier-1 guys who have proven to be able to think outside of the box a little bit, and are the first step in receiving actual problem solving ability. If they can't fix it, you get kicked up to Tier-3 support, although you'd never know it since most Tier-3 folks don't interact with subscriber (that's you, dummy), but instead tinker in the innermost guts of the voicemail platform. And if they can't fix it -- and if the company has a support contract with company that made the voice messaging product -- they call into the vendor for support. That's where I came in.

Frank Glick took this photo at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. When he recorded the shot, he never could have guessed how much it was going to mean to the widow of the World War II veteran buried there.